To account for the complexities of the foundational event in the establishment of monotheism, Moses the Egyptian goes back to the short-lived monotheistic revolution of the Egyptian king Akhenaten (1360-1340 B.C.E.). Assmann traces the monotheism of Moses to this source, and then shows how Moses' followers denied the Egyptians any part in the origin of their beliefs and condemned them as polytheistic idolators. Thus began the cycle in which every "counter-religion, " by establishing itself as truth, denounced all others as false. Assmann reconstructs this cycle as a pattern of historical abuse, and tracks its permutations from ancient sources, including the Bible, through Renaissance debates over the basis of religion to Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism.
- ISBN10 0674587383
- ISBN13 9780674587380
- Publish Date 1 July 1997
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 17 January 2011
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Harvard University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 284
- Language English